the process of building a self and its works is always too slow. One is always in arrears to oneself. Susan Sontag More Quotes by Susan Sontag More Quotes From Susan Sontag A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs-especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past-are incitements to reverie. The sense of the unattainable that can be evoked by photographs feeds directly into the erotic Susan Sontag distance fire past Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe. Susan Sontag swag nature change Existence is no more than the precarious attainment of relevance in an intensely mobile flux of past, present, and future. Susan Sontag flux existence past All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no. Susan Sontag possibility ability understanding False values begin with the worship of things. Susan Sontag values worship In the final analysis, style is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation. Susan Sontag finals style art I write - and talk - in order to find out what I think. Susan Sontag writing order thinking Intelligence is not necessarily a good thing, something to value or cultivate. It's more like a fifth wheel - necessary or desirable when things break down. When things go well, it's better to be stupid ... Stupidity is as much a value as intelligence. Susan Sontag breaking-down wheels stupid Creativity needs to be taken care of. It's like a big baby that needs to be nourished. Susan Sontag creativity taken baby Each generation has to reinvent spirituality. Susan Sontag spirituality generations Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, mush less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back on content so we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. Susan Sontag cutting real art Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance. Susan Sontag women disease important A fiction about soft or easy deaths is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning. Susan Sontag memorial dying death Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers. Susan Sontag compassion action needs Victims suggest innocence. And innocence, by the inexorable logic that governs all relational terms, suggests guilt. Susan Sontag innocence logic guilt For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied. Susan Sontag dying religious death The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation - however minute Susan Sontag transformation minutes interest You have to sink way down to a level of hopelessness and desperation to find the book that you can write. Susan Sontag levels writing book Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics. Susan Sontag this-society mad people I love to read the way people love to watch television. Susan Sontag watches people television
